I learned this morning from the Dallas Business Journal that Facebook has launched a rival site to Linkedin which is called BeKnown.com. Seriously? Is there any chance that we could shrink our online persona instead of increasing it? How many places do I truly need to be found? How many places do we 
want to be found? Social media sites are fighting for our souls so that they can gather data about us and then advertise us to death with targeted information that we happily provided in the name of staying in contact.
OK – rant aside – what does BeKnown mean for employers? One more place to potentially get valuable information about your employees to make sure they are living the type of life an employer would be proud of? Maybe, but, from my perspective, it is one more place for employees to screw up.
Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics, cites studies that show more than 50% of people lie on their resumes. Why then, should people be expected to tell the truth on their on-line professional profiles? With so many profiles, people are bound to get their lies mixed up and having one more profile just gives employers a chance to catch a potential employees in the act.
Of course, employers also have a vested interest in making sure existing employees don’t misquote their qualifications on the internet. If a potential customer reviews more than one profile of a sales representative and discovers an inconsistency – how embarassing will it be for the company when he calls to point it out?
Employers . . . take heed, take advantage, and take responsibility.